There is some irony in the fact that, as the new collective-bargaining agreement was being debated, some of the loudest voices in favor of cutting down the length of NBA contracts were the Maloofs, the owners of the Kings.

The seven-year, $123 million deal they gave to Chris Webber in 2001, the thinking went, damaged the franchise for years, after Webber injured his knee and required microfracture surgery. But the twist is this: If the Kings had been playing under current rules, and only able to offer Webber five years, it is likely that Webber would not have stayed in Sacramento to begin with.

The primary reason that the NBA has a problem with star players staying put—Dwight Howard could be traded soon, after Chris Paul was moved earlier this month—is that the league has not done enough to give a player’s current team a financial advantage over rival teams. The current CBA limits the length of contracts to five years for a player staying with his team and four years for a player who signs with an opposing team. The current team can offer raises of 7.5 percent; opposing teams can offer 4.5 percent. That puts the max deal at five years, $100 million for players who stay and four years, $74.3 million for players who leave.

It is that math that led commissioner David Stern to say, “We think over time, with a five-year difference to give your own free agent, and the 7.5 increases, instead of the four-year and the 4.5 percent increases—so we have a three percent difference—that there will be teams that say to a player, ‘You can play it out this year, but we’re intent upon keeping you and we can pay you, if you are a top player, probably $30 million more.’ So we’re not that worried about it in the long run.”

Problem is, his math is fuzzy, at best. The notion that teams have an advantage when it comes to re-signing their own players is pretty much a myth.

For one thing, it is $25.7 million more, not $30 million. More than that, you can’t compare a five-year contract to a four-year contract, because if you’re a player like Paul, you can be reasonably sure that there will be another contract waiting for you when your four-year deal is up and you’re 31. It is useful to break down what each of these contracts looks like, year-by-year:

Current team New team

Year 1 $17.4 $17.4

Year 2 $18.7 $18.18

Year 3 $20 $18.97

Year 4 $21.3 $19.75

Year 5 $22.6 —

Do the math and you’ll see that, after four years, a player would have made $77.4 million by staying and $74.3 million by leaving. The three percent difference in raises, then, yields just $3.1 million more in salary.

The only way to allow the three percent to have an effect is to have longer contracts. That goes back to the Webber deal, because seven years, $123 million is a significant advantage over what other teams could offer, which was six years and about $91 million. Even when compared through six years, the difference was significant—Webber made about $103 million in the first six years of the contract, a $12 million gap. That was enough of an advantage to get Webber to stay put, and it probably would be enough for guys like Howard and Paul. Or maybe even LeBron James.

Go back to the five-year, $100 million max deal that teams can offer now, with the $3.1 million differential, and suppose that current teams could offer seven years to opposing teams' six. That would be $23.9 million in Year 6 and $25.2 million in Year 7. That’s a seven-year, $149.1 million contract, as opposed to six years and $116 million. Through six years, the home team would have a $7.8 million edge, and the seventh year would be significant for a guy like Paul, who will be 27 next spring and would be playing under his contract until he was 34—in other words, he would not be likely to get that big seventh-year payday. That’s how you get him to stay. You sign him to a deal that overpays him on the back end.

Rules forbid that, though. In each of the last two CBAs, the NBA has shortened the maximum length of contracts, mostly at the behest of smaller-market owners who don’t want the enormous financial commitments that come with seven-year deals. But in doing so, they have actually handicapped the ability of small-market teams to keep their players.